Sunday, October 21, 2007

Ask Coriel: Improving a Retribution Paladin

As a raiding retribution paladin i'm really looking forward to 2.3 and the upgraded DPS it brings for me!

I wondered if you could take a look at my gear and tell me what you thinked about it, and what i could do to improve! Obvious upgrades for my are t4 shoulders and legs, and i'm only 5 nethers away from upgrading my chest armour as well.

Being one of the only ret-raiders in my server (that i know of) i've been finding it hard to gain acceptance from my peers who just whisper about me behind my back (retnoob etc) so i'm just wanting to be accepted by being able to do more dps!

You will need to change your talents once 2.3 comes out. I would suggest taking some points from Benediction and finishing off Fanaticism and Improved Blessing of Might (Build). Also, if you don't need Blessing of Kings, you could take 3 points from Protection and put them in the new Pursuit of Justice (Build - the last point goes in Pursuit of Justice). I'm a fan of speed increases as less time running equals more time DPSing. If you need to keep BoK for raiding, consider putting the Cat's Grace enchant on your boots.

On gems and enchants, I think you are putting a little too much weight on critical strike rating/agility, and not enough on Strength. Your crit rating is nice and high, but your AP is a bit low. Also, always go for Strength instead of pure Attack Power, because you get bonuses from Divine Strength and Blessing of Kings.

As well, once 2.3 comes out you're going to need some more hit rating, and you'll get 4% extra crit from talents and racials. Not to mention that Vengeance will last twice as long, so you can keep it up with a lower crit rating.

As for enchants, you look pretty good. Put a +6 all stats on your chest. If you can squeeze out an extra +16 hit rating (maybe from gems), consider using the Lower City head enchant. It will give you a little more AP and some more mana.

To be honest, you look pretty solid already. You just need to tweak things when 2.3 hits, and I personally would place more emphasis on Strength over crit rating when gemming.

Also, and I'm just throwing this out as an option, if you switched from armorsmithing to weaponsmithing, you would get access to some really nice weapons. But that's a big change, and you do have a decent weapon in Hammer of the Naaru, and you may not have a backup chestpiece.

19 comments:

As someone who knows Retribution well, you have way too much crit at the cost of other important stats. After 2.3, 25% crit should be more than enough.

Your primary focus should be getting around 9% hit. Once you remove misses from the table, you want to keep to 25% crit. Once you have that, you want as much Attack Power (from strength is preferred) as you can get.

A little spell damage and mana regen also does not hurt, keeps you running longer.

One thing I can not emphasize enough is the hit cap. You have to be there. Everything else the above commenter said is right, AP helps your DPS better than Crit after you reach the 100% Vengeance uptime cap. This might change now that we get threat reduction, but there have yet to be any tests so I can't make a statement yet. Also, if you're a raiding pally Savagery > Mongoose until you reach about 2000 AP unbuffed.

I personally am a fan of getting both Benediction and Improved Might and enchanting boots with Cat's Swiftness. I haven't yet tried it with the changes to PoJ though, so it will be interesting to see how they stack up.

Using the season 2 arena gear/honor epics would help as well. Although its not your primary stat, more intellect means you can go for longer, and sometimes even have enough extra mana to burn consecrates.

And finally, if you're planning to be ret after 2.3, you have to get the arena season 3 gloves. The new glove bonus (5% more damage on CS) scales incredibly well and results in more DPS than BT epics.

I hear what you're saying about my profesions, but i am very close to upgrading my chest to the Bulwark of Kings (I'd add a link, but i'm at work and Wowhead etc is blocked!!) which will add:+4 Strength+9 Stamina+3 hit rating+6 Crit +242 Armorand gives me a USE option that adds 1500 health and 150 Strength for 15 seconds.

Obviously i'm not sure what the CD is on that, or what 150 strength would give me AP wise...but thats a big help to me either way.

I only need some nethers and i can craft it.

After that if i get the 2 Nether Vortex's from SSC i can upgrade it again, giving me even more. (cant find stats for this one at the mo)

I'd rather keep my armoursmithing due to the gold i've spent getting it to 375 and upgrading my chest is a priority at the moment for me, as i see the T4 chest as somewhat of a downgrade to my current Chest.

I'm gonna try and sort my gems out as you say, trying to get 95 hit rating as you say.

I use the Bulwark of Ancient Kings, and I have no regrets. It will last you far longer than the weapons, and requires a lot less time spent gathering materials. Upgrade with two vortex instead of waiting to collect eight. Easy way to add some +hit.

With everyone else going weaponsmith, you can pick up the raid weapons rather easily.

The Libram of Avengement is the best retribution libram... until patch 2.3. When the patch hits the first thing you should do is run to and buy the Libram of Divine Judgement for 20 badges, it will increase your dps by quite a bit.

Always pick strength gems over attack power gems. You gain addition attack power from strength by the Divine Strength talent, and additional 10% when you are running with Blessing of Kings.

The Cobrahide Leg Armor (+40 AP, +10 crit rating) is better than the 30 sta, 10 agi you are running with. There is a epic version of the armor kit called Nethercobra that adds 50 AP and 12 crit rating. But it's expensive.

The epic ring you get from exalted with Sha'tar is good, I see you are almost there.

I cant remember how many badges i have at the moment, i think its almost 10 after i bought that ring from the vendor a couple of weeks ago. I'll just do 3 badge runs to heroic mech in the mean time till i get the badges i need and the rep to buy that ring you mentioned.

I see you are in SSC. Try to pick up a World Breaker as soon as you can. They are very sexy for Ret Paladins as they proc about 30% of the time which averages out to some very nice extra crits with Crusader Strike.

Again, drop a bit of crit and get more AP/Spell Damage. With raid buffs keeping up 15 sec vengeance is easy enough. 30 Secs will be perfect next patch. If your raids have any other paladins with their salt, you can drop kings and put points those extra points in ret.

Also, I think you could throw a little spell damage in the mix as well. The two peice tier 4 bonus does wonders when you JotC and rank one consecrate. Ive gotten it to tick for 91 damage before. Thats 91 DPS right there. Its not scientific, but with almost all of our attacks carrying spell damage with them, I'd guess 1 Spell Damage is roughly equal to 1 attack power.

Also, its expensive but try to get a Blessings Deck. That thing is crazy for long boss fights where you aren't moving much.

For now grab the libram from heroic Blood Furnace. Next patch get the badges one. Who knows when the next patch will hit...

I'm helping my guild leader, a Retribution Paladin with his gear, and one flaw we've found far too often is that he runs out of mana. The Infused crafted gems (+AP and +MP5) we've found to be a very good compromise for a blue or red slot. While you're not getting as much of a boost as you would with a +STR gem, getting access to some MP5 without losing too much AP is a win, IMO.

I would NOT recommend slotting AP/Mp5 gems if he plans on raiding. Strength is FAR superior, because of how it multiplies with divine strength and blessing of kings.

If he's running out of mana while raiding, to be blunt, he should start chugging stacks of mana potions like the rest of the mana based dps in the raid do, and/or eating blackened sporefish, etc. to improve his mana regen.

A spell rotation review might also be beneficial...I don't know what the official stance of raiding Ret paladin community is, but dropping down to Rank 1 SoC and forgoing judgment when mana gets tight might be helpful.

"I would NOT recommend slotting AP/Mp5 gems if he plans on raiding. Strength is FAR superior, because of how it multiplies with divine strength and blessing of kings.

If he's running out of mana while raiding, to be blunt, he should start chugging stacks of mana potions like the rest of the mana based dps in the raid do, and/or eating blackened sporefish, etc. to improve his mana regen.

A spell rotation review might also be beneficial...I don't know what the official stance of raiding Ret paladin community is, but dropping down to Rank 1 SoC and forgoing judgment when mana gets tight might be helpful."

QFT, a raiding ret pally shouldn't run out of mana if they have BoW and their holy pallys are keeping up JoW.

A few pots now and then on fights where JoW isn't always feasible is perfectly reasonable as well, and not a large expense for the paladin themselves, at least in my experiences as ret in SSC/TK.